Loose Leaf Notes

My writing is an extension of and a way to organize my thinking. I’m more of a thinker than a writer. For me, writing is the natural final product that results from thinking. I think! ~ Comment recently made by Colleen to Kim (a thinking blogger).
I’d like to thank Blue Mountain Mama – who said my writing helps keep her in touch with her inner bohemian free-spirit – Ruth, and Carmen for naming me as a recipient of the “Thinking Blogger Award.”
The award, which has been traversing the blogsphere and originated HERE, comes with a challenge. Those who have been awarded are asked to name five others to pass the “thinking blogger” torch on to.
I read other people’s blogs for many reasons. I enjoy good quality writing, appreciate humor, and love it when the two are mixed. Sometimes I’m drawn to a blog to get a glimpse into a lifestyle unlike my own, or because I’m attracted to the blogger’s personality. I also read to learn, to be inspired, and to look at pretty pictures. Here are the five blogs I’ve chosen for the Thinking Blogger award because they make me think:
Simply Wait: Patry bakes pies for the muse and hosts the 3rd day book club. I first came to her blog through the lure of her waitress poetry. She got my attention when she revealed in her first comment on Loose Leaf that she remembered Paragon Park, the now defunct amusement park in the small Massachusetts beach town I grew up in. When I discovered that she grew up in Brockton, my maternal grandmother’s hometown, our blogging friendship (from my point of view) was sealed. I walk the Cape Cod shoreline vicariously through Patry, and recently followed her on a west coast book tour to promote her first novel, Liar’s Diary. She ponders life’s questions and encourages dialogue with her readers. This waitress turned novelist has an infectious sense of play and her writing is flawless.
Humanyms: Pearl has fun with words. She plays a glad game, loves poetry, architecture, and cooking. She passes on an endless supply of interesting links and thoughtful quotes. Her words skip, skim, and sink-in because of her playful poet’s perspective. Where else would you find the following: Brain runneth over. It bobs about. Maybe it’s the rain from all night and all morning displacing it like a cork. Thank goodness for the cap of bones or the brain might wash away entirely and we couldn’t have it running down the streets on its own, its grey getting all gritty and salty in the sopped rivulets getting carried away downhill. The lobes might get lodged in the sewer grate with it mutely wiggling and jerking to free itself before the crocodiles.
Chronicles from Hurricane Country: Elissa’s range of interests span from as far up as the night sky to as low as the smallest bugs that crawl at our feet. Creatively prolific, I view her as part scientist and part poet. I love to go on virtual walks with her and her partner Mary by way of her photographs. She, a one time Bostonian now living in Florida, sings, makes beautiful collages, and has been a published writer since she was a teenager. She recently signed a book contract and was posting about her writing background when she made this wise remark: “I’ve always felt my freelance work is better than a free education because it’s an education I get paid for.”
Carbon Press: Josephine’s current blog mission statement reads: “I’m going to drive my beat up old Honda Civic until it dies.” She’s a cancer survivor and advocate who has offered her help to others navigating through the ordeal of cancer treatments. She doesn’t shrink from revealing her real and sometimes raw emotions. Her writing is fresh. It surprises and makes me want more. In a recent post called “Ectoplasmic Is My New Favorite Word,” she wrote, Green tinted the breeze as a stormfront moved in yesterday. Chartruese pollen. Ectoplasmic green. My black car has been margarita green for two weeks. Live oak trees have thousands of neon green chandelier earings dangling from budding branches. Loblolly pines are puffing tufts of mitochondrial green clouds like crotchety old dragons huffing out snorts of smoke.
Open Book: Jennifer was voted ‘Most Mischievous’ her senior year of high school, has never seen a Star Wars or James Bond movie, and was once introduced to a drag queen by her uncle. “She was stunning. I was stunned. For a moment,” Jennifer explained. Her blog is “based on a true story,” and her writer’s voice is a natural one that entertains and engages. Her inventive blog titles tease you to read and you’re never sorry when you do. The last time I looked, Jennifer was on a blog sabbatical, but you can flip through her spilled ink archives, listed on the margins of her Open Book.
Post note: Oh! It’s 11:00 and I haven’t had breakfast. All this linking has stopped me from thinking and eating. I’ll be back soon to proof this!